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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Material challenges for spectral hole-burning memories

Zameer U. Hasan

Published Nov 5, 1998• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

It was envisaged that spectral holeburning based optical memory will provide orders of magnitude improvement in storage densities. The progress has basically been hampered by the lack of materials with proper performance characteristics. In the past two decades, novel atomic scale processes involved in holeburning have been investigated in detail in order to improve the performance of existing materials and to engineer new ones. On the other hand, significant advances have been made in optical storage techniques to use the materials available. And now, new materials that can approach the specifications of a memory device using different techniques for the storage are either available or are just over the horizon. This paper reviews the status of different classes of spectral holeburning materials suitable for memory devices.

DOI
10.1117/12.330414

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It was envisaged that spectral holeburning based optical memory will provide orders of magnitude improvement in storage densities. The progress has basically been hampered by the lack of materials with proper performance characteristics. In the past two decades, novel atomic scale processes involved in holeburning have been investigated in detail in order to improve the performance of existing materials and to engineer new ones. On the other hand, significant advances have been made in optical storage techniques to use the materials available. And now, new materials that can approach the specifications of a memory device using different techniques for the storage are either available or are just over the horizon. This paper reviews the status of different classes of spectral holeburning materials suitable for memory devices.
ABSTRACT A review of the status of ultra-high density spectral storage has been presented. Keywords: Ultra-High Density Spectral Storage, Spectral Memories, Terabits Storage, Spectral Holeburning, Optical Holeburning, Multi-layer Th infilm, Power-Gated Holeburning, Optical Materials, Rare Earths 1. INTRODUCTION Spectral Storage offers the highest possible storage densities thus far. Terabits per square inch and even more have been shown to be possible, in principle. Spectral storage is unlike any other type of storage. Magnetic, holographic, multi-layer storage [1], etc., are all macroscopic scale storage in the sense that the macroscopic properties of the recording material are transformed to record a series of zeros and ones. Spectral storage is at the atomic or microscopic scale. A small number of atoms in a solid-state medium are used to store a ‘bit’ of information. This is responsible for the high storage density of spectral storage. A cubic micron of solid has ~10 18
Many storage and processing systems based on spectral holeburning have been proposed that access the broad bandwidth and high dynamic range of spatial-spectral materials, but only recently have practical systems been developed that exceed the performance and functional capabilities of electronic devices. This paper reviews the history of the proposed applications of spectral holeburning and spatial-spectral materials, from frequency domain optical memory to microwave photonic signal processing systems. The recent results of a 20 GHz bandwidth high performance spectrum monitoring system with the additional capability of broadband direction finding demonstrates the potential for spatial-spectral systems to be the practical choice for solving demanding signal processing problems in the near future.
Optical devices have been slower to mature than those based purely on electronics. Yet optical interactions offer a number of unique capabilities expected to support entirely new classes of devices-devices offering unprecedented performance in communications, computing, and data storage applications. In the present work, optical devices based on the interaction of light with frequency-selective recording materials are discussed. A frequency-selective recording material has the capability of supporting multiple independent recording channels. Each channel is addressed by light within a specific narrow band of optical frequencies. In some materials, operative at cryogenic temperatures, millions of distinct spectral channels are available. Through the mechanism of persistent spectral hole-burning, light can be employed to transiently or even permanently modify the absorptive or dispersive properties of the recording material within a selected channel. Such modifications provide a means of recording multiple bits of optical information within single spatial locations. Spectral multiplexing of information has clear potential in information storage systems. Less obviously, the ability to spectrally encode information provides an enabling basis for ultrahigh speed, content-controlled, all-optical switching devices operable at data speeds up to the Terabit/sec level.
Persistent spectral hole-burning and photon echoes can provide insight into the dynamics of amorphous and crystalline materials on the molecular/atomic level. Part of the current interest in these methods, however, is also caused by the existence of potential applications in optical data storage and processing. At present it may be difficult to specify exactly at what applications these techniques should try to target but, based on current research efforts and results, it appears that persistent spectral hole burning is a possible candidate for high density, possibly long time, volumetric storage, while photon echoes have properties more attractive for short time storage or storage connected to processing applications.
In the form of micro-particles europium doped alkaline earth sulfides have been shown to exhibit high density of permanent spectral holes. The photon-gated spectral holeburning (PGHB) in these systems provided the most promising characteristics of any material known to date. These spectral holes can be used as optical memory. However, for any optical storage device either large size single crystals or thin films are required. Thin films of these materials are grown by Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) technique. This fast and simple growth technique is superior the single crystal growth or the molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) as far as the holeburning properties are concerned. Transparent glassy MgS:Eu and CaS:Eu films have been grown and tested for the spectral holeburning properties. Critical parameters such as the relative concentration of Eu2+ and Eu3+, and optical quality of thin films have been investigated. Int his paper we report on the growth and the high-density optical holeburning in these films. The density of spectral holes has been further increased by burning in multiple Eu-centers in a material and by depositing multiple layers of thin films of different materials in a stack.
We have examined the technique of persistent spectral holeburning as a method for analog optical data storage. Two types of materials were examined from a theoretical standpoint, ones which exhibit photochemical holeburning (PHB) and ones which exhibit nonphotochemical holeburning (NPHB). We have presented the conditions under which a PHB material shows a linear relation between hole depth and exposure intensity or exposure time. Also we show that a NPHB material has no such condition. We conclude that a PHB material may be useful for analog optical data storage, while a NPHB material would not. Experiments were conducted with a NPHB material, R' color centers in LiF, to support the NPHB analysis.